ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will be discussing entanglements which produced the HPV vaccine in three specific countries – Sweden, Austria and Colombia. Studies conducted about the implementation of the HPV vaccine show that it attracted, intensified and amplified a variety of discourses, and that these have been unstable and contested as vaccination policies were implemented. At certain times, and in certain places, the HPV vaccine was sexualized through its association with teenage sex or with uncontrolled male promiscuity. But the vaccine was also desexualized in some of the discourses, associating it more closely to cancer and death. The vaccine was connected to girls’ bodies in Sweden and Colombia, but with both boys’ and girls’ bodies in Austria. Finally, refractive analysis of the HPV vaccine dispersed a spectrum of human and non-human actors in the author assemblages which, when enrolled in different constellations, produced very different vaccination arguments and policy decisions in the various countries.
